GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — We saw young children at Plainfield Child Care in Grand Rapids, but they were amazed at some of the science and weather experiments we did. They all love talking about tornadoes, so we thought we'd show the spinning vortex using a 1970s portable mixer and throw in some facts and safety tips.
Luckily Michigan lives far away from tornado alley in the southern Plains and Lower Mississippi Valley, but that doesn't mean we don't get tornadoes here. On average, Michigan sees about 15 tornadoes each year, spawned in seconds from severe thunderstorms. It's usually hot and cold air (in its simplest terms), coming together and creating/starting a spinning motion. If this vortex never completely materializes, it may just be a funnel that never reaches the ground. In that case, it's only considered a funnel cloud that does no damage. The funnel must reach the ground in ordered to be considered a tornado.
Many times in Michigan, these tornadoes spin up quickly, sometimes between severe weather radar scans within a minute or two. That means we may only see them on one scan, and they may be gone the next. These brief EF0 or EF1 tornadoes can still do damage. The EF scale, or enhanced Fujita scale is what we use to classify the wind speed of these swirling masses of air or this vortex. Tornadoes in the northern hemisphere tend to rotate in a cyclonic or counter-clockwise fashion. In some rare cases, they can rotate clockwise and be anti-cyclonic.
Our 1970s mixer does a nice job (in its simplest form) of swirling the water, creating a funnel at the top, then the funnel reaching the ground or bottom. That's generally how it works in real life. As we explained to the kids, the safest place to be during a tornado warning is in the basement or an interior room if no basement is available. Remember, a tornado warning means tornadoes are possible. A tornado watch means conditions are favorable for the development of tornadoes.